Meta Prepares an Arena, a Prediction App Similar to Polymarket
JAKARTA - Mark Zuckerberg seems to be not satisfied with just playing on social media. Meta is now said to be preparing its own prediction market application. The concept is similar to Polymarket, but in the early stages it has not used real money.
As reported by TechCrunch, Wednesday, June 24, citing The New York Times, Zuckerberg has given the green light for the development of the application. Internally, the project is called Arena.
This application is designed to stand apart from Facebook, Instagram, and other Meta social media services. However, Meta platforms are said to still be able to direct users to log in and interact with Arena.
The Arena concept is currently still experimental, but it is a top priority. Users can later guess the results of a certain topic. If the guess is correct, they get points. It's more like a game than a betting exchange.
However, the opportunity to use real money is not completely closed. The New York Times source said that the money feature could be added later.
Prediction markets are platforms where users guess the outcome of an event, such as politics, economics, sports, or other public issues. On some platforms, the guess is traded like a contract. From here the business becomes big, as well as prone to come into contact with gambling rules.
In the past year, the prediction market has made huge profits and sparked controversy. As of April, trading volumes on Polymarket and Kalshi, two popular platforms for trading predictions on an event, have reached tens of billions of US dollars.
X, the platform owned by Elon Musk, has also been approaching the industry. X partnered with Polymarket last summer.
Legal problems are also increasing. One prominent case involves a former high-ranking special forces soldier who is accused of using insider information to profit from the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
George Santos, a former member of the United States House of Representatives who has been dragged into various political scandals, is also being investigated for alleged trading in Kalshi.
A number of states in the United States are suing prediction markets for allegedly violating gambling laws. The matter is getting more complicated because the current government, which supports prediction markets, is also suing the states that first sued the industry.
Meta's plan to enter the prediction market makes this issue even bigger. With a giant user base, Arena has the potential to bring the prediction market from a special user space to a wider entertainment feature on the phone.